In the Age of the autocrats in which we live, the world contemplates absorbed what two elders will do that maintain a strong control over their countries. Two elders who are not accustomed to ignore their will. Donald Trump, 79, has ordered the destruction of three facilities of a nuclear program in which Iran has invested hundreds of billions of dollars. Ali Jamenéi, 86, hidden in a bunker, must weigh his next steps. It cannot show weakness, but it runs the risk that its response, initiated on Monday, causes a brutal US reaction and that Israel continues the process of demolishing the Iranian government.
For many years, Israel claimed that the US uses the largest non -nuclear bomb that has in its arsenal against the Iranian nuclear program. A thirteen tons antibunker pump with an explosive head of 2.7 tons. It was supposedly the definitive weapon in the objective of destroying what Fordo hides, a mountain in which the underground facilities are located about a hundred meters deep. Trump has presumed that success has been complete and that the objective has been “total and completely razed.” Without presenting evidence. The head of the Armed Forces, General Caine, has not been so resounding.
As recklessly as unpredictable, Trump has announced a few hours ago a fire between Israel and Iran, which is the product of his speech and collaboration in the mediation of the Qatar government, and not of an initiative of the two belligerent countries. This morning, Israel has attacked several goals in Northern Iran killing eleven people. A housing building in the Israeli town of Bersheva has suffered the direct impact of a missile and has reported four deaths. The Minister of Defense has announced an answer against “Tehran's heart”, which is still very soon to know if the truce will survive this day.
If the defense of a country demands consistency and determination, Trump can boast the second, but not the first. The US demands that Iran return to the negotiating table, but the truth is that Tehran had not abandoned it. It was Israel who created a new situation by triggering an air war against Iran to which Trump has joined directly with the attack against Fordo, Natanz and Isfahán.
Trump likes victories and maybe that's why he has hurried to promote a truce. He had shown in previous weeks his commitment to the negotiations with which to reach an agreement with Tehran, perhaps with the same lack of realism as when he said he would be convinced that he would end the war in Ukraine in a short space of time. According to several American media, he changed position when he saw the success of the first round of Israeli attacks that eliminated the Iranian military dome. The triumphant coverage of Fox News, which Trump consumes every day, also left his mark on the president.
Credibility is an essential factor in any negotiation. Therefore, a president lets others who try to deceive with tricks, ads that do not intend to fulfill or anonymous leaks. But it was Trump himself, who never hides his desire for prominence, who took care of the deception of stating that he would take one or two weeks to take the final step. By then, the decision was made.
Jamenéi is more alone than ever. In the last year and a half, the strategic security network available to Iran has collapsed, what was called “the axis of resistance.” Fundamentally, he does not enjoy the indirect protection that Hizbolá lent him from Lebanon to an Israeli threat. Syria no longer has an allied government that is indebted to Tehran. Several of his most direct collaborators in the Army or the Revolutionary Guard are dead.
He is the political and religious leader of Iran since 1989. In the previous eight years, he was the president of the country. His priority has always been to reinforce the legitimacy of the regime, which includes persecuting the most active reformists, and extending the influence of Iran in the Middle East. Human rights protests have been numerous, especially in 2009, but have never endangered government survival. As much as Jamenéi asks the population to participate in the elections, before the regime deals with vetoing candidates who can be a danger at the polls.
The murder of Qasem Soleimani in the US in 2020 deprived him of a key protagonist in relations with the Shiite movements of the region, someone who was more important than the Minister of Defense. It was thought that a large revenge would occur. Everything was limited to an attack with dozens of missiles against an American base in Iraq that was notified in advance of the Trump government. The soldiers had time to protect themselves in the shelters. It was a way to settle accounts without causing an escalation.
That seems to be Jamenéi's intention again with Monday's attack with a small number of missiles to the largest American military base in the Middle East located in Qatar. Iranian government sources informed The New York Times that they had notified Qatar before with the intention of reducing the number of casualties. The base had been practically empty. It is therefore a symbolic attack that Iranian propaganda will later take care of enhancing.
Trump has said he will never accept that Iran manages to manufacture nuclear weapons. It has been the policy of all American governments. Your weekend attack can cause paradoxically otherwise. Iran has before him the opportunity to abandon the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty with what would be out of the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (OIEA). But that would not prevent Israel and the USA from continuing to attack their nuclear centers, even if they have no legal authority to do so.
Netanyahu, 75, is the third man with an immense ability to condition US politics. He has proven it well with different presidents. Its mission is to end the Iranian nuclear program forever and create a situation that causes the sinking of the Jamenéi regime.
It is a return to 2003, when he made a promise to the American congressmen about the overthrow of Sadam Hussein: “If you end up with Sadam, with the SADAM regime, I guarantee that there will be huge positive consequences in the region.” What happened was that the Middle East was filled with blood, Al Qaeda benefited from the chaos of Iraq, USA was immersed in a wicked imperial adventure of nine years. One of its predictable political consequences was the increase in Iranian influence in Iraq.
The high positions of the most skeptical Trumpism with the use of force, such as vice president JD Vance, insisted on the weekend that the US does not seek a “regime change” in Iran, an objective that is out of reach if the intervention is limited to aerial bombing. In television interviews, some answers only served to twist the meaning of words. “We are not at war with Iran. We are at war with the Iranian nuclear program, ”Vance told him if he supported that Israel tried to kill the Iranian leader. “That depends on the Israelis – he replied, “but our opinion has been very clear and we don't want a regime change.”
Anything is possible with Trump. A few hours later, the denials lost a good part of their value with a message from the president in his social network: “It is not politically correct to use the term 'regime change', but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran Grande again, why shouldn't there be a regime change?”
Jamenéi will interpret it as a personal threat. In the short term, the priority of your government is to safeguard the product resulting from its centrifugators. Iranian sources informed Reuters that the Government had taken out all the enriched uranium – estimated in 408 kilos – before the attack to hide it in a secret place. An important part of that uranium is enriched at 60%, a percentage that is close to the minimum minimum necessary with which to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
Ali Shamkhani is one of Jamenéi's main advisors. They were killed after one of the Israeli bombings, but is alive and recovering from the wounds. Through Twitter he has published a message that summarizes the mentality of Jamenéi and the promise that the conflict is far from its end: “even if the nuclear facilities are destroyed, the game is not over.”
Use: Updated information with Trump's announcement at the beginning of a high fire between Israel and Iran.
